The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come | Page 6

by noon--for he was a sturdy walker and as tireless
almost as Jack--and ten miles is a long way in the mountains, even now.
So, already, Chad was far enough away to have no fear of pursuit, even

if old Nathan wanted him back, which was doubtful. On the top of the
next point, Jack treed a squirrel and Chad took a rest and brought him
down, shot through the head and, then and there, skinned and cooked
him and divided with Jack squarely.
"Jack," he said, as he reloaded his gun, "we can't keep this up much
longer. I hain't got more'n two more loads o' powder here."
And, thereupon, Jack leaped suddenly in the air and, turning quite
around, lighted with his nose pointed, as it was before he sprang. Chad
cocked the old gun and stepped forward. A low hissing whir rose a few
feet to one side of the path and, very carefully, the boy climbed a fallen
trunk and edged his way, very carefully, toward the sound: and there,
by a dead limb and with his ugly head reared three inches above his
coil of springs, was a rattlesnake. The sudden hate in the boy's face was
curious--it was instinctive, primitive, deadly. He must shoot off-hand
now and he looked down the long barrel, shaded with tin, until the sight
caught on one of the beady, unblinking eyes and pulled the trigger. Jack
leaped with the sound, in spite of Chad's yell of warning, which was
useless, for the ball had gone true and the poison was set loose in the
black, crushed head.
"Jack," said Chad, "we just GOT to go down now."
So they went on swiftly through the heat of the early afternoon. It was
very silent up there. Now and then, a brilliant blue-jay would lilt from a
stunted oak with the flute-like love-notes of spring; or a lonely little
brown fellow would hop with a low chirp from one bush to another as
though he had been lost up there for years and had grown quite
hopeless about seeing his kind again. When there was a gap in the
mountains, he could hear the querulous, senseless love-quarrel of
flickers going on below him; passing a deep ravine, the note of the
wood-thrush--that shy lyrist of the hills--might rise to him from a dense
covert of maple and beech: or, with a startling call, a red-crested cock
of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from spur to spur, as
though he were keeping close to the long swells of an unseen sea.
Several times, a pert flicker squatting like a knot to a dead limb or the
crimson plume of a cock of the woods, as plain as a splash of blood on

a wall of vivid green, tempted him to let loose his last load, but he
withstood them. A little later, he saw a fresh bear-track near a spring
below the head of a ravine; and, later still, he heard the far-away
barking of a hound and a deer leaped lightly into an open sunny spot
and stood with uplifted hoof and pointed ears. This was too much and
the boy's gun followed his heart to his throat, but the buck sprang
lightly into the bush and vanished noiselessly.
The sun had dropped midway between the zenith and the blue bulks
rolling westward and, at the next gap, a broader path ran through it and
down the mountain. This, Chad knew, led to a settlement and, with a
last look of choking farewell to his own world, he turned down. At
once, the sense of possible human companionship was curiously potent:
at once, the boy's half-wild manner changed and, though alert and still
watchful, he whistled cheerily to Jack, threw his gun over his shoulder,
and walked erect and confident. His pace slackened. Carelessly now his
feet tramped beds of soft exquisite moss and lone little settlements of
forget-me-nots, and his long riflebarrel brushed laurel blossoms down
in a shower behind him. Once even, he picked up one of the pretty bells
and looked idly at it, turning it bottom upward. The waxen cup might
have blossomed from a tiny waxen star. There was a little green star for
a calyx; above this, a little white star with its prongs outstretched--tiny
arms to hold up the pink-flecked chalice for the rain and dew. There
came a time when he thought of it as a star-blossom; but now his
greedy tongue swept the honey from it and he dropped it without
another thought to the ground. At the first spur down which the road
turned, he could see smoke in the valley. The laurel blooms and
rhododendron bells hung in thicker clusters and of a deeper pink. Here
and there was